Behold Office 2007

Office 2007 pricing and packaging has been accounted. You work hard for the …

Microsoft Office. You love it, you hate it. You need it, or no one does. Microsoft's cash cow is either ground beef or a sacred bovine depending on who you ask, but one thing is certain: another version will bring another round of strong sales, buffeted both by OEM deals and an insatiable thirst for the latest and greatest among some users. Upgrade addicts, here it comes. Microsoft has announced the product details for Office 12, now christened Office 2007.

"The 2007 release is the productivity breakthrough that customers have been asking for," said Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft. "Today, we’re revealing new products in the Microsoft Office system and a number of new options that provide customers with flexibility in how they purchase our products. That’s great news for businesses eager to provide their workers with the best productivity tools possible for information management and collaboration."

Office 2007 is the latest installment of Microsoft's collaboration strategy, but not all seven of the new versions are aimed at the workplace. The retail entry level for Office 2007 will remain at US$149—the price for the "Home and Student 2007" version that features Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. OEM customers (only) may have the option of purchasing a "Basic" edition along with a new computer, which features Word, Excel and Outlook (pricing information for this version is not public). Neither version has upgrade pricing, as upgrades are not available (you can upgrade to another version, however).

The big news here is the "student" version, which was previously known as the "Student and Teacher" edition. Microsoft introduced that version with Office v.X for the Mac and Office 2003, and the company allowed it to be sold in just about every possible retail location. The end result was that people who were neither students nor teachers were buying the edition because of its low price, and Microsoft didn't care. With 2007, the company is formally acknowledging that many people just want a few apps for the lowest cost possible, now pitching the $149 price point for both academic and home settings.

If the basics don't do it for you, the next entry point is considerably steeper. Office Standard 2007, which includes Outlook as well as the standard trinity of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, will retail for $399. Upgrades to this version will be $239, and this is the lowest price that any 2003 users can pay to upgrade to 2007, since upgrades are not available for Basic or academic versions. Small Business 2007 adds Publisher 2007 and the business contacts manager for Outlook, for $449 ($279 upgrade).

But hey now, we're professionals, right? Well, the Professional edition will cost $499 ($329 upgrade), and the extra $50 gets you Microsoft Access. But this time around, that won't get you to the apex of Officedom. Rather, two new editions—Professional Plus and Enterprise—will be available to volume licensing customers only. Professional Plus adds InfoPath, Office Communicator, and "integrated solution capabilities such as ECM, electronic forms, and information rights and policy capabilities." To this, Enterprise adds OneNote (note: this is only available otherwise in Home and Student) and Groove.

As you may have noted, Microsoft FrontPage is missing from all configurations. The company is expected to sell that FrontPage as a standalone application, but details have not been announced.

Two items which you may not be used to seeing are Communicator and Groove. Communicator is Microsoft's corporate IM solution, and Groove is the company's virtual whiteboard collaboration software. Groove was acquired by Microsoft early last year, but the software has been around for several years. We're big fans of it here, and I can't wait to see what has been done with it recently.

For the most part, pricing hasn't moved from Office 2003, although unknown volume licensing costs prevent us from making a firm analysis. The packages haven't changed much, either, but I must say that I'm disappointed to see Outlook left out of the Student and Home version of Office. Microsoft clearly feels as though Windows Mail (the new name of Outlook Express) is "enough" for most users, but as a big fan of Outlook, I do wish the company would be more aggressive about getting that application out there. Most students and homes would benefit from Outlook before PowerPoint, I dare wager. But I'm well aware that not everyone shares my love of Outlook 2003, or my estimation of how insecure Outlook Express is.

In any case, the higher-end of the Office spectrum does have some hidden costs. Many of the collaboration features that make something like Enterprise interesting also require SharePoint Portal Server or another server-based technology (e.g., Office Forms Server 2007, Office Groove Server 2007 and Office Project Portfolio Server 2007) that will add to the overall cost. As you can imagine, the licensing for this is getting more complex by the application. To try and simply things, Microsoft is introducing two new approaches to client access licenses.

Two client access license (CAL) suite options have been designed to help customers purchase a solution that delivers the power of the integrated desktop and server environment in a simplified manner and at a significant discount from the cost of individual components. Available today, the Core CAL combines the access licenses for Microsoft’s most popular servers, including Windows Server™, Microsoft Exchange Server, Office SharePoint Portal Server and Systems Management Server. The new Enterprise CAL will consist of the Core CAL plus new capabilities such as enterprise data searching, spreadsheet publishing, Web-based form creation and unified messaging. It will also include new offerings from Microsoft Operations Manager, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, Windows Rights Management Services and Microsoft Security products.

I don't envy the people who work with licensing (but I do wish more of them could speak authoritatively on the topic... I hate getting wishy-washy answers on compliance questions, but I digress).

Office 2007 is expected to ship sometime in the second half of 2006. We'll be bringing you more coverage of Office 2007's new features in the coming months.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.